Episode 209: Colder Weather Fitness Ideas
Introduction
You’re listening to Live Free Creative, an intentional podcast with practical tips for living your life on purpose. I’m your host, Miranda Anderson, and I believe in creativity, adventure, curiosity. And the magic of small moments. I hope that every time you listen, you feel empowered and free to live the life that you want.
Hello. Happy to be here with you this morning, afternoon, evening, wherever you are. Thank you for tuning in to Live Free Creative podcast. I’m your host, Miranda Anderson. Today’s episode is number 209. Cold Weather Fitness.
It’s coming. If you live in the northern hemisphere, it’s coming. It may not be coming quickly where you are, depending on where you live. And for those of you down south, down under, I wish you a blessed spring and summer in the months ahead.
For me and my community here in Virginia, we are just getting the first kind of cool breezes of fall. It’s been about 50 degrees in the morning on our walk to school. The leaves are just starting to turn.
We’re far enough south that we’re on the tail end of the leaf peeping season, so it isn’t brilliant color everywhere yet, but it will be soon.
When this episode airs, my family will have just gotten back from what will probably be our last camping trip of the year. I will have to say though, this was only our third and I was supposed to do four camping trips before my 40th birthday, which is in February.
So I may need to sneak in some sort of glamping situation like in a yurt or a state park cabin. I will update you on whether or not that happens.
I’m hoping though that this camping weekend went well, that the weather held as far as it didn’t rain, and I actually much prefer camping when it’s not blazing hot, so the fall in Virginia is perfect for camping.
As I have been brainstorming upcoming episodes and the trajectory of the show and what types of topics I wanted to hit on, something I really value about sharing every week with you is the opportunity to touch on topics that are universal and applicable.
In fact, some of my favorite reviews over the last four years of the show have been people who say, ‘Miranda seems to know what I’m thinking or what’s happening in my life, because the things that she talks about relate pretty closely to what I’m actually going through.’
And so this episode is an attempt at that same sort of picking up on what’s in the air.
Although not everyone feels exactly the same way about everything, I know that there’s a good chunk of people for whom the seasonality of the weather really influences the seasonality of their activity level, of their fitness level, of the way that they think about moving their bodies.
This show is all about helping you feel a little bit better, helping you live your life a little bit more on purpose. And one of the ways that we do that is by making some plans, by thinking about what’s coming next and giving ourselves a really nice runway and some really clear objectives to each for, putting ourselves on a path of progress in the direction that we hope to go.
So right now in my own life, I’m considering what this fall/winter is gonna look like. And I have to say I’m doing that with the help of my therapist. We’ve talked about how the seasons really affect my mood and my outlook, and so knowing that fall/winter, when it gets cold, I start to go into hibernation mode.
I shut down. I don’t feel as motivated. I don’t have as much energy. I just don’t like to be cold. That’s really like the long and short of it.
And so when the days get shorter, I like to be warm and I like it to be sunny. And those are two things that are not easy to come by where I live in the winter.
So regardless of what the actual weather is where you live, I want you to just take a minute to think about what does this upcoming season look like for you? Even if you live in a place where the fall/winter is beautiful like Phoenix or San Diego, there is also a seasonality to just the energy in the air.
As the year winds down, things tend to get a little bit busy. We have a lot of holidays upcoming. There’s often some pressure that we put on ourselves with different social events, with different family events. I think the pandemic has both made the ability to gather together and spend time together really fun for some people and also has added sort of a level of social anxiety or just awareness or exhaustion in those situations for others.
So with all of the things coming up over the next few months, I just want to use today to invite you to think about, ‘what you would like your activity level and fitness routine to look like in the next couple months?’
It is widespread, widely available, empirically proven data that moving our bodies is good for us. It’s good for our bodies, it’s good for our brains, it’s good for our sociability, it’s good for our connection to our communities–depending on how we’re moving our bodies, where we’re exercising, where we’re walking or running, or hiking or biking, or any of the things that we choose to do.
It just is. So why do so many have a hard time with it?
I wanna dig into a couple ideas that may help you as you formulate your plans for physical fitness in the next couple months as the weather turns, whether it’s getting warmer or colder for you. And I will do that right after today’s segment and sponsors.
Segment: Magical Adventure Moment
This time last year I was getting ready for an epic Costa Rican adventure with Dave. For our 15 year anniversary, we spent 10 days wandering exploring adventuring in Costa Rica. It was of course amazing, and I wanted to share one magical adventure moment from that trip.
I woke up pretty early one morning. I used most of the trip to luxuriously sleep in as well as I could because I didn’t have any kids to get up to.
I wasn’t taking anyone to school in the morning. I wasn’t going straight to the gym. And one day I woke up about the time the sun was rising, Dave was still asleep, and so I quietly dressed and walked down this little pathway from our hotel to the beach. And on the beach, I nestled into a fallen log my toes in the sand and watched the sunrise over the ocean.
And as it started to come up, I started to see other people out, surfers out cruising on the waves, catching them and gliding along them and falling back into the ocean and swimming back out for more.
Those times. They don’t happen that often, but when you are able to see yourself as one small piece of a huge, interconnected world, I watched these surfers and imagined them finishing up and climbing up onto the beach, and where do they go next? Where do they live? Are they on vacation? Do they live nearby? Do they have families? What do their families look like? What are their hopes and their dreams? Are they living them out? What are my hopes and dreams? Am I living them out?
There’s something really scary and also really comforting about recognizing your place in and among this vast global community. It’s terrifying and really awe inspiring to feel at home in yourself among your community, among the world.
It’s so easy to be tied up in knots and wrapped up in our everyday. It is so easy. Even just this morning, I was thinking about all of the little stressors, all of the little things that feel really big in the moment, that when you zoom out enough to have the perspective of life as a whole and of us as a piece of this whole network and of the good that exists, of the love that exists of the connection that we can build, I feel so much more motivated and inspired and optimistic.
Sometimes when I zoom out a little bit and I’m not so focused on what’s happening just with me and with my life and with my inner world, but I’m also able to see how that connects to everything else.
Main Topic: Cold Weather Fitness
Now let’s move forward into the idea of setting ourselves up for success with regards to our physical activity in the upcoming months.
For most of you, that means that things are getting colder and that brings one obstacle. For some of you, it may mean things are getting hotter and that can also yield other obstacles.
I first want you to take inventory of where you’re at right now are. If you were to rate your own physical activity on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being I’m doing exactly what I want to. I’m as active on a regular basis as I want to. I really enjoy my activities. I feel good in my body. That’s a 10.
And a one is I haven’t even started. There’s nothing. I feel really disheartened about this or discouraged. I don’t look forward to activity. I don’t really have anything that works for me right now.
Think about where you are on that scale. You can write it down or you can just keep it in your mind. My goal is that by the end of this episode, in 20 more minutes, that you feel a little bit better on that scale.
So if you’re already at a 10, come along for the ride and maybe you’ll learn something new. And if you’re not–if I were rating myself right now, I’d probably say I’m about a 5. Andknowing that what I know about myself in the winter, like my tendency is to slide down on the physical activity scale during the winter because it’s much easier for me to be out about and active in the summer.
So I’m coming at this from a place of I’m a five sliding into a four or a three, and I want to set myself up to not only stay at a 5, but maybe even get myself up to a 6.
I know. Can you believe it? We’re moving ourselves forward in progress. So think about where you are right now, and I’ll tell you why.
I’m a five. I’m a five right now because although I have a fairly regular routine of walking or riding my bike to school with my daughter in the morning, as the weather has gotten colder, it’s been harder to wake up. And so sometimes we’re a little bit late, and when we’re late, then we drive.
And it doesn’t happen that often. It’s maybe been twice out of the last two weeks, but I really like the feeling of getting up and knowing that we’re moving our bodies on the way to school.
It’s good for me mentally. It’s good for us to have that time to converse and to be out in the neighborhood and to say Hi to neighbors. There are myriad reasons.
Walking and biking to school feels really good for us. So I want to make sure that stays solid even when the weather gets colder, which means being able to get up a little bit earlier, or at least turn all the lights on and have some hot chocolate and kind of be ready to go.
It means setting ourselves up for success with gear, that we have the right socks and boots and coats and gloves and umbrellas. So those are some of the things I’m thinking about.
Also, I have had a couple minor injuries over the last month, so I have a little bit of Achilles tendonitis right now. Probably just from going to the gym and maybe pushing myself a little further than I maybe should have.
So I saw a physical therapist who recommended no running or jumping for the next six weeks, which makes CrossFit a little bit trickier than it was. A lot of the movements that we do include some form of running or jumping.
The gym is really great about modifying that, but I think because of that discovery a couple weeks ago, I decided to stay home a little bit. I’ve been busy with school. I’ve been busy with family things happening, and so I’m right in the middle.
I’m like, Okay. I have a lot of improvement to make. I feel pretty good about some baseline things and I would like to move forward. So that’s where I’m starting out.
Here’s a couple things that I think are really important.
One I talked about in Happy Class a month ago. Did you know that you are more likely to form a positive physical activity, healthy habit when you enjoy the activity while you’re doing it?
Do you enjoy the way that you move your body? Do you enjoy, if you go to the gym, who you go with, where you go? Do you like it? The actual process?
Not do you go because you know that it’s good for you, not do you go because you know that you’ll feel better later, but do you like how you get to move your body?
And I suggested in that Happy Class that maybe we’re thinking about physical activity the wrong way. Maybe we have two narrow a definition of exercise.
Maybe we don’t all need to be exercisers. Maybe we can be simply active in our lives and maybe in the winter that looks like more walks, going on walks and enjoying being in nature, being out in our neighborhoods, seeing people maybe going to nearby parks or trails, if you have some in your neighborhood.
Maybe swinging and playing on the playground with your kids. I’ll be honest, I don’t do a lot of that and when I do like on the very rare occasion that one of my kids cajoles me into doing the monkey bars for example, which I can barely do.
I have a lot of fun and I remember I love to swing. I like going down the slide. The monkey bars are a challenge. The monkey bars are like a CrossFit exercise.
Reframing the way that we spend our time in the outdoors or moving our bodies as all of those things count and the more intention that we give to them, like pre-planning, which is what this episode is intending to do, give you a little bit of time to think about the way that you want to move your body.
And then also choosing things that you like. There is this sort of weird, pervasive attitude around exercise that we’re supposed to not like. That it’s hard and that it sucks, but we need to do it anyway and that we’re supposed to think it’s super painful.
No pain, no gain.
And if that mentality around exercise isn’t working for you, it’s not working for you, it’s totally okay to say that doesn’t fit with me. It doesn’t jive. I want to enjoy my exercise. I want to go on a leisurely walk around the pond at the library.
Maybe we’re just thinking about it all wrong and we can adjust our expectations and find some of that motivation that automatically happens when we enjoy what we’re doing.
I will link this study that I’m talking about in the show notes as a reference, so if you want to go read the specifics about this academic paper that shows that if you enjoy it, if you have wellbeing or pleasure during the activity itself, you are more likely to think about it when you’re not doing it, and that thinking about it functions as an internal motivator, scheduler, planner to then actually get you back there to get you to whatever that activity is.
So here’s a question: How do you like to move your body? What do you like to do that involves movement and physicality. Is it dancing? Is it ice skating? Is it climbing trees? Is it going apple picking? Is it gardening? Is it mowing the lawn?
Here’s a fun fact: I really like mowing the lawn. I don’t do it very often because I’m not great at it and Dave’s teaching Milo how to do it and, going into the winter, it’s not super relevant right now.
But I like mowing the lawn and it’s hard work to push that thing around. And if nothing else, I’m walking back and forth around the yard for an hour that counts. That’s fun. It can be and it’s useful, like two birds with one stone.
What do you like to do? How do you like to do it? Where do you like to do it? And with whom do you like to do it? Maybe as the winter approaches, you could ask a couple friends or neighbors if they’d like to do a lunchtime walking group, if they’d like to.
Maybe you want to do a weekly bike ride with a friend, a couple friends, or maybe date night could become date afternoon where you spend your time moving.
Maybe it’s walking around a museum, maybe it’s exploring a new part of the city. A couple weeks ago I was in New York City for a couple nights–Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, I came home Sunday.
You cannot help but walk multiple tens of thousands of steps when you are visiting a city like New York City. You walk everywhere. You’re not dependent on your car. You just walk places.
And there’s something really beautiful about the way that is so automatic. You don’t think about walking. You don’t go to New York and think, I’m gonna walk 20,000 steps a day to get really fit. You think I wanna go try that restaurant that’s across town. I want to go to that shop. I wanna see that new mural. You’re guided in your activity level by other things that you enjoy.
How can that apply to your life during this upcoming season? I wanna highlight the gym for a second. I know not everyone’s a gym person, but I wanna highlight the gym can serve many different functions, especially during bad weather when it’s not easy to be outside, whether that’s summer or winter.
One of my friends, the one who I went to New York with, talked to me about how she just joined a gym that she really loves. It’s like a spa gym. It’s a little bit of a splurge. And she said, I have never felt better about an investment because I don’t only go to the gym to exercise, which she does.
She loves going there and doing like a group. And because she’s already there, she then uses another hour of the free gym childcare to write, to do work, or to catch up with friends on the phone. The gym is serving as as a childcare, as a place away from home that feels like somewhere cool to be.
It’s really nice. She can do her exercising and have some alone time, whether for work or for play. When you think about the way that a gym, depending on where you live and what it is that you’re doing, can satisfy especially if you have young kids. I remember doing this too, going to the gym, dropping the kids at the gym childcare, doing my exercise, and then having another hour to hang out with my friends.
In Texas, it was like a crew. We’d go do body pump together and then hang out, let the kids play on the playground. It became sort of part of our sociality was this physical activity, and it was good for the kids. Socially. It was good for us socially, emotionally, mentally, physically.
How could you incorporate something that combines things that you enjoy and that you want to do with the activity that is going to benefit your body?
If you’re a fairly new listener, or even if you’ve been around for a while, I want to highlight episode 154. That episode is. Enjoy the outdoors all year round and it really I get really specific about layering about the types of clothing that can help you be warm and spend time outdoors. Whether it’s walking to school, whether it’s going on a hike, or going snowshoeing or skiing or sledding.
Any of the activities that you choose to do in winter weather really require. Good gear. And in episode 154, I break that down for you in a very detailed, specific way, and I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback about how helpful that was.
So if you’re thinking, Gosh, I really do want to go on nature walks or go on walks around my neighborhood or go biking, or I would really like to try ice skating or skiing. But I get too cold or I just don’t, feel like it because I’m not prepared physically for those types of activities. That episode will really be helpful in the physical preparation as far as what it looks like to layer what type of gear I have experience with that I recommend, and how to mentally and physically prepare to spend more time outdoors even in the winter.
Another idea that I’ve had in the past is to do something that feels like summer even though it’s winter, and the first thing that comes to mind for me is swimming. I really like to swim. I like swimming laps. I also like just being in a pool.
If you’re swimming in a pool, you tend to be moving your body. It’s great, really great exercise if you have any sort of joint conditions, or even if you’re pregnant and have a hard time doing other types of activity, or if you’re just getting into physical activity after a while and you want something gentle on your body swimming.
And being in the water is really gentle and really good for you. And it feels like summer, getting into my swimsuit and going into the local indoor swimming pool. You can get a day pass, you can get a monthly membership everywhere depending on where you live. Almost everywhere. We’ll have an indoor pool available in some capacity, whether it’s a public swimming pool, whether it is, combined with a gym.
A lot of gyms have indoor pools depending on how big they are. The Y M C A usually has at least one facility per city that has a pool. There’s something really fun about swimming in the winter and having that feel like an activity to look forward to, to look forward to with your kids, to look forward to by yourself.
It feels almost like cheating, like you get a little bit of that summertime splashing around joyful feeling of swimming even though it’s the middle of winter.
I also want to highlight just as like a backup plan. There are so many great free exercise and fitness ideas on YouTube. You can do yoga, you can do Zumba, you can do hip hop dance. You can do hitt workouts or running in place, or using soup cans as weights.
Maybe you’d have a great time being entertained while you exercise through one of these indoor YouTube based fitness guides or instructors.
I think there’s also like a ton of great apps for this. I know I use the Peloton app from time to time, even just for guided walks and runs. The Peloton app is really great.
I know that Wilma my friend Meg, has a great fitness app called Wilma with lots of different home based and gym based workouts if you prefer to do that individually and you like having someone guide you on your fitness path.
As I leave you with some time to brainstorm, I want to share a couple resources from the American Heart Association around outdoor activities. So think of these if you haven’t yet.
Brisk walking or hiking, jogging, raking leaves, shoveling snow. (I know that doesn’t sound fun, but it can be fun.) Ice skating, sledding, CrossCountry skiing, Snowshoeing.
And in inside you can dance, do active housework, walk the mall. (We could all become mall walkers. How cool would that be?) Bowling, roller skating, museum walking, city walking.
The key is that you have a plan. That’s why we’re talking about this. So you can formulate a plan B.
Choose something that you like. Not that you think you should like, or that you wish you liked or that you have heard is really good for you, but something that you actually enjoy doing.
And if you don’t know, maybe it’s a good time to give yourself a couple weeks to experiment. Try a few different things. Visit a local gym or a local dance class or bar class. Ask a friend about going on a bike ride, once or twice a week and explore what that might look like where you live when you have a plan and you choose something that you like.
You are much more likely to follow through when you’re gentle with yourself about whether or not you follow through and how often you follow through. You are more likely to follow through more often.
Conclusion
I hope this episode is helping you turn your mind toward what you want your activity level to look like and feel like over the next couple months.
As the weather turns, I wanna invite you to set some ideas, some plans in motion, whether that’s gathering some new gear for layers so that you can go on more walks outside in your neighborhood, or whether that’s texting a friend or two, or your sister or your mom, and asking if they’d like to come over and do a yoga class with you a couple times a week.
The more that you enjoy the activity, the more likely that you are to do it, and the more active you are, the better off you will be mentally, physically, emotionally.
Moving our bodies helps us feel well, and my invitation today is for you to make a plan so that you look forward to being active over these next few months.
Okay. After all of that, I feel like every single one of us just needs to add roller skating to our plans for activity in the next couple months. How fun. I haven’t been roller skating in probably years, so I’m adding it to my list along with my pulling out my layers, getting ready for my daily walks, and settling into the idea that with enjoyment and intention that this winter I can be as active as I’ve ever been.
Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope that you feel a little bit more prepared mentally, if not physically, for the changing of the weather and maintaining your fitness all winter long. We can do it, you and me. Let’s make a plan. Let’s find something that we enjoy and make it happen all winter long.
I’ll chat with you next time. Bye-bye.
